Friday, August 10, 2012

Tyro Elliott

Beaverton, Oregon February 4, 1983It
was shortly past two on Wednesday morning, February 10. 1982, when a
southbound trucker climbed back into the cab of his rig after a brief
stop at the Santiam rest facility, located just off Interstate 5 near
Albany, Oregon. While accelerating to gain speed for re-entry onto the
freeway the trucker suddenly slammed on his breaks to avoid hitting a
man who, without warning, had jumped out of the darkness into the path
of the oncoming truck, waving his hands and arms frantically. The
trucker, shaken by the near-accident, got out of his rig to see what all
the fuss was about.
The man was obviously distraught and was speaking nearly incoherently
due to his excited, frantic state, or because of some sort of speech
impediment. It was difficult at first for the truck driver to determine
what was causing the dis­traught man’s difficulty in speaking, and
several repeated attempts to calm the man through kind words and actions
ul­timately failed, prompting the truck driv­er to wonder if the man
could even hear him. Finally, the distraught man was able to communicate
to the truck driver that he was a deaf-mute, thus explaining the
difficulty speaking. Since he could not hear, the man never learned to
speak properly.
Eventually, the trucker was able to calm the man down, and the man
identi­fied himself as 43-year-old Tyro Elliott from Beaverton. Through
the course of the next several minutes Elliott com­municated to the
trucker that he had been abducted by two armed men from his home in
Beaverton, and had been drop­ped off at the Santiam rest stop. Although
he didn’t have the complete story, it was enough to prompt the truck­er
to call the Albany Police Department on behalf of Elliott. However,
the truck­er was informed that the rest stop was out of Albany’s
jurisdiction, and he was advised to contact the Albany office of the
Oregon State Police, which he did. He then drove Elliott to their
offices.
Using verbal and sometimes written communications, Elliott told the
state police officers on duty that earlier, on Tuesday night, he’d gone
shopping at a Beaverton store, leaving his wife and two children at
home. When he re­turned home a short time later, he said, he found that
his home appeared to have been ransacked.
Not long after entering his house, Elliott told police, he was
confronted by three men wearing ski masks and armed with handguns.
Communicating with him by the use of hand signals (sign language),
Elliott told the cops that his assailants continued to ransack his home,
stealing cash and credit cards in the process. Elliott said that the
three men then ordered him into his own white van, and proceeded to
drive south on Interstate 5 until reaching the Santiam rest stop near
Albany. After ordering him out of his van at the rest stop, said
Elliott, his assailants handcuffed him to a small tree and left.
However, Elliott said that he was able to bend the small tree over and
escape by slipping the hand­cuffs over the top of the tree. He said he
eventually removed the handcuffs from his hands and flagged down the
truck driver who brought him to the state police offices in Albany.
Elliott said that he did not see his wife and kids when he was abducted
from his home, and ex­pressed his concerns about their safety.
Shortly after 3:00 a.m. Oregon State Police notified the Beaverton
Police De­partment of the man’s story, who in turn sent officers to the
Elliott home, located in the 14100 block of Southwest Red Haven Drive,
to investigate.
When the officers arrived at the well-kept residence, they noted that
there were no signs of entry to the door or windows. But it was
shortly after 3:00 a.m. and very dark outside, making it difficult for
them to be 100 percent cer­tain that the alleged assailants did not
force their way inside the house. The officers made a note for
detectives to check again later for any signs of forced entry, after
sunrise.
After checking the outside doors and windows, the officers returned
to the front door and rang the doorbell, then knocked loudly. Several
moments later the door was opened by two children who identified
themselves as Elliott’s kids. The officers noted that they had obviously
awakened the children, and when asked regarding any earlier
alterca­tion between their father, mother and any strangers, the
children replied that they knew nothing of the alleged incident. The
cops concluded that the children evidently slept through the ordeal, if
in fact it had occurred.

Where was their mother? One of the officers asked the sleepy
children, and was told that their mother was a deaf- mute and was
likely asleep. Fearing otherwise, the officers asked to search the
premises for themselves, and were led into the living room.
Once inside the house the officers be­gan an extensively exhausting
room-by-­room search, noting several locations of the house were in a
general state of disarray, with some of the rooms appear­ing as if they
had indeed been ransacked. A short time later one of the officers
called out to the others from an un­disclosed location in the house
and, when they arrived, saw that he had dis­covered the body of a
woman, whom they believed to be that of Nonnie L. Elliott, wife of the
alleged kidnap vic­tim. The children were taken to a differ­ent
location in the house where they could not see what the cops had
dis­covered, nor hear the minute details of what they were about to
discuss.
The officers noted that it appeared the woman had been beaten
severely and stabbed several times. Although her body was fully clothed
and there appeared to be no signs of a sexual attack, the cops were
nonetheless aghast at the bloody mess that was the woman’s body. They
immediately requested assistance from the homicide division.
While they were waiting for the arrival of homicide detectives and
additional personnel, the officers first to arrive be­gan mentally
recording the physical characteristics of the scene so that they could
later enter it into their official writ­ten reports. Trained to protect a
crime scene, the law officers touched no­thing they didn’t have to,
knowing it was their responsibility to ensure that every­thing remained
exactly as they had found it, in order to assure a flawless probe.
Shortly before 4:00 a.m. the Be­averton Police Department’s homicide
detail was on the job, and they likewise alerted Washington County
Deputy Dis­trict Attorney Ray Robinette, Washing­ton County Medical
Examiner Dr. Ronald L. O’Halloran and the Oregon State Police crime
laboratory located in nearby Portland. When they arrived, they found the
victim lying in a pool of her own blood in the same location where the
first officers had found her. Her body had not been moved.
The interior of the room where the woman’s body was found was
ghastly, if not because of the body itself then because of the pool of
blood and blood spatters, most of which were still wet but in varying
degrees of wetness, depending on the size of the blood spot or patch.
Needless to say, it was an extremely gruesome sight for even the most
sea­soned sleuths due, mainly, to the stab wounds the woman had
sustained and the amount of blood she had lost.
Upon initial examination from observation, the homicide sleuths could
see that the victim’s head had sustained injuries and had likely been
beaten on the head with some sort of blunt instrument. The cops took
note of the fact that the victim’s mouth was twisted, convoluted in a
violent manner, an indication that she died horribly. But in spite of
the beating and the stab wounds she had sus­tained, the probers could
not im­mediately determine the precise cause of death. They would have
to wait for that information until an autopsy could be performed.
“There were some blows struck, and a knife was involved,” said
Washington County District Attorney Ray Robinette, who added that the
woman, now posi­tively identified as Nonnie Elliott, a resi­dent of the
house, had been killed “in the neighborhood” of 10:30 p.m. the eve­ning
before, apparently before or during the alleged abduction of her
husband, Tryo.
As the investigation continued, the de­tectives kept in mind that
they could be their own worst enemies, at least as far as contamination
of the crime site was con­cerned. As they probed for evidence the
sleuths took extreme precautions not to disturb potential evidence until
the state police crime lab technicians could proc­ess it and begin
removing it in an orderly manner. The investigators knew they would have
to be able to account for every item they touched for the possible
future elimination of fingerprints. They also knew they would have to
remember every place they walked in the event they discovered bloody
footprints made by the perpetrator.

The lawmen reasoned that if Elliott’s story was accurate, the
assailants must have forced their way in through the front door when
either Mrs. Elliott or her children answered it, thus explaining why
there were no signs of forced entry (subsequent efforts by homicide
de­tectives failed to turn up any forced doors or windows). The
detectives had to consider the possibility that Mrs. Elliott or her
children opened the door to some­one they knew, but if that was the
case, why didn’t Mr. Elliott also know them? But, on retrospect, they
had to rule out the possibility of the children opening the door to
anyone because they had been asleep when officers arrived to
in­vestigate and knew nothing of any earlier altercation, or so they
said. There was no reason to suspect the kids of lying, and it was
extremely doubtful that they could go to sleep knowing their mother lay
dead in another room, brutally beaten and stabbed to death. But why
hadn’t they heard anything? Surely, probers reasoned, such a violent
altercation would wake even the soundest sleeper, but these kids
evidently slept through the entire ordeal. Why? It was a gnawing
question they just didn’t have an answer to at this point.
When the medical examiner arrived, he made a preliminary examination
of the victim’s body, taking notes as he went along. He observed rigor
mortis had be­gun to set in, but had not yet reached an advanced stage,
an indication that the victim had not been dead more than a few hours,
which coincided with the 10:30 p.m. estimate of the alleged
altercation and abduction of Tyro Elliott. He also took a rectal
temperature reading of the victim’s body heat, which also pointed
towards the 10:30 estimate of the time of death.
When he had completed his examina­tion the medical examiner told the
de­tectives, much to their dismay, that he could not give them any
specific answers at this point and could not give them any information
that they had not already noted themselves. They would just have to wait
and hope that an autopsy would turn up something more significant. But
it was doubtful, for it was obvious that the victim died from the stab
wounds or the beating she had sustained, or both. The medical examiner
said the body could be removed to the county morgue when the
detectives and crime lab technicians no longer needed it at the crime
site.
Upon the arrival of the Oregon State Police crime lab technicians, a sign was placed on the front door of the house which read: DO NOT ENTER. THESE PREMISES ARE CLOSED DUE TO AN INVESTIGATION BEING CON­DUCTED THEREIN.
Once inside the house, the crime lab personnel conferred briefly with
the de­tectives and the deputy district attorney to obtain information
pertinent to the case. They then set about completing their detailed
work by first surveying the interior of the house to determine the path
of the perpetrators. Once they had completed this task they had a rough
idea as to what order the house would be processed, although they
admitted that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to determine
precisely where the violent ordeal began.
Crime lab investigators and police photographers soon began taking
pic­tures of the victim’s body from many different angles. They also
photo­graphed the interior of the house careful­ly before moving
anything, keeping in mind all the while that photographic rec­ords are
invaluable aids to detectives, enabling them to recall the locations of
various objects should they have to tes­tify in court. They also knew
it was their job — as much as it was the detectives’ — to protect a
crime scene from contamina­tion or destruction of potential evidence.
Once the house was photographed, a fingerprint technician from the
Oregon State Bureau of Identification began ex­amining the single-story
dwelling for fingerprints, of which he found many. Knowing that most of
the prints would likely belong to the victim and her fami­ly, the
fingerprint technician equally knew that he would have to go through a
tedious process of elimination by fingerprinting the victim’s body, her
family and those present at the crime site before knowing for certain
who the prints belonged to.
The technician concentrated his efforts on the windows ledges, door
fac­ings, tables, appliances, and everywhere else he thought he might be
able to pick up good impressions. The possibilities were endless.
Suffice it to say that he didn’t ignore many areas, and when he had
finished, he had many latent im­pressions to examine, all of which could
be identified if he had a suspect to match the prints to.

The crime lab experts continued with their tedious work at the crime
site throughout the day, on the assumption that a criminal cannot
commit his crime without taking something belonging to him inside with
him, such as hairs, clo­thing fibers or any of a number of various
items. They also took blood samples from the various areas of the
house, and set up bright flood lights to aid them in looking for
footprints that might have been made from the victim’s blood.
Additionally, due to the considerable amount of blood and blood
spatters present in the house, the investigators concluded that it would
have been vir­tually impossible for the killer(s) to have completed
his savage act without getting some of the victim’s blood on his or
their own clothes. With this in mind, the in­vestigators searched all
the rooms in the house, including hallway closets and the basement, in
an attempt to recover any blood-soaked clothing that the fleeing
assailants might have discarded.
After obtaining as much obvious evi­dence as was available, not to
mention the not-so-obvious, the detectives and crime lab experts packed
up their gear while noting that all nearby resi­dences should be
contacted. After the victim’s body was removed from the house, the
homicide probers decided it was time they started knocking on doors.
The cops confirmed by talking to neighbors that the Elliotts had
lived at their Beaverton residence for 12 to 14 years. The husband,
Tyro, had been em­ployed as a machine operator at Tektro­nix in
Beaverton, a high technology in­dustrial plant, for 15 years. The
Elliotts were described by several neighbors as a “fine family,” who did
not socialize much in the neighborhood.
“They were very quiet and very fami­ly oriented,” said one neighbor,
who asked not to be identified. “I think they lived here for about 12
or 13 years, but no one knew them very well. They stayed to
themselves.”
“I don’t think either of them could hear very well and their speech wasn’t clear at all,” said another resident.
“We spoke to each other and kind of looked out for each other, but we were not close friends,” said still another neighbor.
After contacting all the neighbors in the area, the detectives were
unable to find one single person who heard or saw anything suspicious
late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning. This trou­bled them
immensely. Why? It was a gnawing question. Why hadn’t Elliott’s
neighbors or their children seen or heard anything suspicious? It just
di­dn’t seem likely to the detectives that a violent killing and an
armed abduction by three masked men could be carried out without someone
seeing or hearing something.
Where did the three armed men come from? A search of the neighborhood
failed to turn up any out of place or abandoned vehicles. Did they
simply walk to the Elliott home? Or were they dropped off by an
additional accom­plice?
Tyro Elliott was again interviewed by the homicide probers and,
through a sign language interpreter, he repeated his story much as he
had several hours ear­lier. He said he’d gone shopping, re­turned home
to find that his house had been ransacked, was confronted by armed,
masked assailants who forced him into his own van and drove to the
Santiam rest stop where he was hand­cuffed. He said he believed that the
assailants’ final destination was some­where on the Oregon coast, but
could not name the precise location.
Elliott, accompanied by several in­vestigators, returned to the
Santiam rest stop and pointed out the location where he had been
handcuffed to a tree and identified his white van, still parked at the
rest stop. Sleuths noted that the tree to which he had been handcuffed
was small and thin, and could easily have been bent to allow Elliott to
escape. Af­ter a brief search of the area, probers found a pair of toy
handcuffs Elliott said had been used to secure him to the tree. The
handcuffs were taken as evidence, and the van was impounded to the state
police crime labs in Portland where it could be thoroughly processed
for clues.
How did the assailants flee or other­wise get away from the rest stop
after leaving Elliott’s van? Did they have an­other car waiting for
them at the rest stop? Did they hitchhike? Steal a car? Walk? Elliott
had no answers for them, explaining that he was out of sight from his
assailants when they fled, and left it up to detectives to come up with
the answers to their own questions.

There had been no reports of stolen vehicles in the vicinity of the
rest stop on the morning of February 10th, so sleuths could easily rule
out that possibility. As far as the other possibilities were
con­cerned, they simply had to resign them­selves to the fact that it
would be di­fficult, if not impossible, to pin them down.
Several hours later, the detectives accepted the fact that they had
not been able to uncover any significant additional leads. At this
point, all they had was a dead woman on their hands who had been badly
beaten, stabbed repeatedly and left to be found by her children or the
cops. Fortunately for the kids, it was the cops who found her.
They did have some accompanying evidence which might later prove
useful, consisting of blood and tissue samples taken from the crime
site, the victim’s body, a white van, and a pair of toy handcuffs.
Detectives declined to say, however, if they had recovered any weapons,
and took their skimpy leads and scarce clues back to their offices
where they would spend the rest of their day and most of their evening
compiling reports and comparing notes.
In the meantime, Sgt. Wes Ervin, public information officer for the
Beaverton Police Department, explained at a news conference that
detectives working on the case simply did not have enough detailed
information of the cir­cumstances regarding the homicide to come to any
firm conclusions. Ervin said that Tyro Elliott would, of course, be
questioned again, but emphasized that he was not a suspect in the case.
Ervin added that the detectives had no suspects to zero in on at this
point in the investiga­tion.
Meanwhile, Washington County Medical Examiner Dr. Ronald L.
O’Hal­loran completed his autopsy on Nonnie Elliott’s body and
officially concluded that she had been beaten on the head with a blunt
instrument, stabbed multiple times, but had died of mechanical
asphy­xia. O’Halloran stated that mechanical asphyxia is an obstruction
of the air pas­sage and can be caused by a number of methods. However,
he did not comment regarding the precise cause of mechanical asphyxia.
With nowhere else to go with their investigation, detectives returned
to Elliott’s neighborhood in their quest for the elusive pieces to
their homicidal puz­zle. Was there anyone who would want the woman dead?
Anyone at all that she didn’t get along with? The probing homi­cide
sleuths asked the questions over and over to everyone in the
neighborhood, searching for a motive behind this seemingly motiveless
crime. They in­terviewed relatives, known friends, ac­quaintances, even
Elliott’s co-workers, but they simply hit one dead end after another.
Probers considered that Nonnie Elliott’s slaying might have been a
stranger-against-stranger crime, as her husband claimed, which would
ul­timately make the case more difficult to solve. But gut-level
feelings told the sleuths that this wasn’t a stranger-against-stranger
crime, as did the fact that they had no evidence indicating that it was.
No one in their mind, the sleuths reasoned, would willingly open
their door to a complete stranger late in the evening, much less open it
to three com­plete strangers. Of course it was possible that Mrs.
Elliott did not lock the door when her husband left for the grocery
store, making it possible for her assailants to enter freely and without
warning. But, again, it just didn’t seem plausible.
Again the question of why no one saw or heard anything suspicious on
the night of the homicide came up, nagging at the inquisitive brains of
sleuths, refusing to go away. Even deaf-mutes can make noise with
their voices loud enough to signal that they are in distress. And
law­men reasoned, it is only human nature to become curious if there is
something or someone of a suspicious nature lurking about one’s
neighborhood. But no one, not even Elliott’s own children, re­ported
hearing or seeing anything out of the ordinary that fateful night.
Could it be that nothing out of the ordinary, aside from the
seemingly senseless homicide, happened that night? Could it be that Mrs.
Elliott was killed by someone she knew and trusted, after her children
had gone to bed? Was it possible that she had become embroiled in a
heated argument with someone, us­ing sign language, of course — a fight
which ultimately turned into a violent altercation that resulted in her
death?

If their current line of reasoning was correct, a lot of the
detectives’ questions would be answered. If Mrs. Elliott had become
involved in a heated argument with someone using sign language, it was
possible, the investigators theo­rized, that she had been struck
without warning with a blunt instrument, perhaps knocking her
unconscious, and was sub­sequently beaten and stabbed. That would at
least explain why no one, parti­cularly her children, had heard
anything. But who was the culprit? Her husband? Or some other person
close to her who knew sign language?
Tyro Elliott was brought to Beaverton police headquarters for
additional questioning and was interviewed at length by homicide
detectives through a sign language interpreter.
Elliott again told his story of abduction by masked gunmen but, this
time, there were dis­crepancies to his tale. Sleuths left him along for
awhile in the interrogation room while they conferred with each other
and compared notes. When they returned they placed Tyro Elliott under
arrest, and charged him with the death of his wife. After reading him
his rights, Elliott was taken to the Washington County Jail in Hillsboro
where he was held without bail.
“There were inconsistencies, dis­crepancies and events that could not
be substantiated in any respect,” said Washington County Deputy
District Attorney Ray Robinette, adding that he understood that the
killing occurred as the result of “a domestic argument of some sort,”
and that homicide detectives now believe that Elliott drove himself to
the Santiam rest stop and set the scenario to make it appear as if he
had been abducted. Robinette declined further comment about the case.
Tyro Elliott was indicted by a Wash­ington County grand jury, which
charged him with murder in the strangulation death of his wife,
38-year­-old Nonnie. Elliott retained Portland attorney Wendell Birkland
to defend him, and pleaded innocent to the charges.
However, in a surprise move before a trial date had even been set,
Washington County Deputy District Attorney Bruce Johnson announced that a
plea bargain­ing agreement had been reached through negotiations with
his office and Elliott’s attorney, Wendell Birkland. Johnson said that
Elliott agreed to plead guilty to the lesser charge of first-degree
man­slaughter. In exchange for the guilty plea the state agreed not to
recommend a five-year minimum that could be imposed on a full maximum
sentence of 20 years in prison on the manslaughter charge.
Oregon law defines first-degree man­slaughter as the intentional
killing of another person “under the influence of an extreme emotional
disturbance,” and the normal sentence is 20 years, allowing for the
sentencing judge to impose a minimum number of years that must be
served. Birkland, Elliott’s attorney, an­nounced that he did not agree
with the intended sentencing and said that he would “offer testimony and
witnesses that another sentence would be more appropriate.”
In accepting the plea before Judge Jon B. Lund, Deputy District
Attorney John­son said that “we feel this is an appropri­ate plea in the
case,” and stated that it had been approved by District Attorney Scott
Upham.
At Elliott’s sentencing, testimony was heard from a Seattle
psychiatrist who said he examined Elliott extensively and was convinced
that the victim had suf­fered from a rare mental condition known as
“Capgras syndrome,” dis­covered in the 1920s by a doctor in France.
“The individual (inflicted with the condition),” testified the
psychiatrist, “usually a schizophrenic, has the belief that a person
close to them is really an imposter that has taken the place of a real
person. Nonnie believed her husband was not really her husband. She
attacked the person she believed to be the impos­ter with such
conspicuous vigor that Tyro genuinely feared for his life. He did not
know what was going on.”
“He was fighting a wounded bear,” testified one of the defendant’s
friends who said he “trusted (Elliott) com­pletely.” In recommending
that Elliott be placed on probation in the care of a relative instead of
going to prison, Elliott’s attorney, Wendell Birkland, called several
character witnesses in­cluding friends, relatives, co-workers and
others. They testified that they felt Elliott would not be a threat to
the com­munity if he were released on probation.
However, Deputy District Attorney Johnson urged Judge Lund to impose
the maximum sentence of 20 years (without setting a minimum before
Elliott could become eligible for parole). “Some­times,” argued Johnson,
“one might wonder who the victim was, listening to these witnesses.”
Johnson cited the facts that the crime Elliott committed was brutal,
that he “set up” the crime scene in such a way that it would lead police
to think that a robbery had been committed. Johnson stressed the fact
that Elliott left his two children inside the house alone with the body
of their dead mother. Stat­ing that he had doubts regarding the
de­fendant’s claim that he killed his wife because he had been provoked,
Johnson said that even if true, “It doesn’t take away from the
seriousness of the crime.”
“This is not an easy case (to decide),” said Judge Lund, stating that
although Elliott may not be a threat to the commu­nity he should still
be sentenced to prison to serve as deterrent to others. He added that
Elliott should be sentenced to a pris­on term so that he will be placed
in an “isolated” environment where he can think about the crime he has
committed, and so that the state can be certain that he receives
psychological treatment.
On Friday, February 4,1983, nearly a year after he killed his wife,
Tyro Elliott was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Actual time served,
however, would be determined by the State Parole Board.